I was volunteering at the border during the so-called long migration summer in 2015. I didn’t have ready made internet access or applications. I hadn’t started using WhatsApp at all before 2015, until I realised that many people were using it to stay in contact or organise. It was comforting, if you’re meeting someone on the border, to be able to contact them, to see if they made it safely to their next destination. Of course phones got lost or destroyed, but still. That is when I started to use WhatsApp. I would write them in any language I was speaking with them [English, French or Spanish], and then I would Google translate it as well [to their mother tongue]. So offering them a choice to check the message for the details that might get lost otherwise.
And when we started to organise these gatherings [with women who were looking to make Zagreb their home, where we didn’t share a common language], we realised not everyone was comfortable enough to be flexible in communicating with basic things like body language or with hands, tone, so it was good to be able to say “hey, here is something you could use, and you can also download it on your phone”. But that too takes a lot of competencies – not everyone knows how to do that or was comfortable doing that.
There are different written languages, different spoken languages, and then there is the Google language: short sentences, direct, no poetry in it, subject-verb, repetitive, simplified, in order to get the point across This is also when I realised how many idioms I use and how full the English language is of idioms. It is paying attention to so many things in order for it to work. Still, I remember having Google Translate mediated conversations around divorce, sex and abuse. Imperfect but better than nothing. At least this is the thought I comforted myself with hoping that there were no serious unseen negative repercussions.
You use the tools that you have at your disposal, but it makes you think about resources. Just because you have Google Translate doesn’t mean that the person you’re talking to will have Internet access. The first thing one does when a person comes to the Atelier or wherever we are meeting is to ask “Hey, do you have internet, do you need me to hot spot you?” I have a flat rate so I would still offer them the hot spot, so they don’t spend theirs. So it makes you think about resources in general, not just about knowledge, ideas, language usage.
Sometimes you don’t want to dumb down the language, because you don’t want to sound patronising, or to oversimplify the idea. But I was recently writing about the difference between the communal and the common, and I did a test. I translated it to Farsi and back to English, but the distinction didn’t go through. (Common and communal translated into Arabic and back to English was “common and sectarian” and in Farsi “common and shared”) So if you want to talk about those concepts, you would actually start by explaining that there are two words in English that sound similar, and have the same root, but there is a difference. If you really want to get to nuances you need to spell it out, which actually does not dumb it down, it makes it even more complex. That’s the irony – you simplify one thing, but you’re really trying to get to the essence, and that is not something you do with someone you share the language with. There are always some assumptions about what someone knows, and that we understand the same thing, so there won’t be a misunderstanding if we speak the same language. Of course there always is. For example, we used multilingual facilitation in our strategic planning, and this opened up the possibility to really talk about what something means, such as “respect” for example. In a monolingual setting it would be assumed, but not necessarily everyone will be on the same page. But we don’t necessarily ask what someone means by “respect.” The multilingual setting uncovers another dimension in the world. It goes much more beyond making the language understandable, it is uncovering the meaning beyond the words.
A friend said “you guys are doing a lot of communication labour”. And yes, this is communication labour. And so is writing an email, translating it to many different languages.
And there is also the choice of languages. Maybe there is one person who speaks Urdu, and you would include it, and that sends the message to that person that we’ve been thinking of them. Sometimes people say “let’s just do English and Croatian”, but I have a friend who speaks very good English and Croatian, but we were still including her mother tongue in our communication. She once said, almost in passing, that she knows we are including the language for her and that she appreciated we didn’t just assume she understood English and Croatian. Sometimes it was just easier to read in her mother tongue, or maybe she just enjoyed the possibility of reading something in her own language because it is not a common language that you would come across in Croatia. Constant translation is a community building tool that goes beyond just making sure that the ideas are expressed and understood by all parties involved.
It is also interesting to see how aware we are of the things that surround the conversations – facial expression, touch, eye contact, tone, whatever comes into contact. This is also a lot about power and hierarchy. For example I realise that when I speak Croatian I sound a certain way. There was a situation where I knew a person for some time, and we exchanged a few words in passing, always in Croatian. So one day they asked me for a longer conversation, an interview, but I asked if it could be in English. At the end they said “wow, you should only speak English! You sound so much smarter”. I’ve been there. It is very humbling, you know you’re coming across in a different way than you would in your mother tongue. And we are inviting people to basically get over their inhibitions, to make a fool of themselves in a way. Some of us are lucky and privileged enough to be ok with making fools of ourselves.
With these tools you’re providing the space for a person to be on the same page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person can contribute, because maybe by the time they better understand what was said, the conversation has moved on. Or a person feels dumb, frustrated, or afraid that others will be frustrated with them if they don’t understand or express themselves well. This is why so much care needs to go into it, without putting pressure on someone to participate. Just the fact of including different languages, and putting in the effort consistently, reinforces the focus on care. When those tools aren’t used it gives a different vibe, it is much more hierarchical, divisive, between those whose knowledge, ideas, opinions are shared and those who are relegated to listening, whether passively or actively. Of course going through the effort doesn’t guarantee active participation. Many messages on social media or email go unanswered. But somehow it feels all worth it especially when over the years you see someone transform from being silent, to eventually daring to make mistakes, to now speaking out freely.